


Down the Road

by bearwithme



Category: Homestuck
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2011-12-17
Updated: 2011-12-17
Packaged: 2017-10-27 10:50:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,470
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/295001
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bearwithme/pseuds/bearwithme
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“Well, all right, what happened next, presuming that I did make the very true claim that I do not cry?”</p><p>“Youyouyouu…” She bounced excitedly and rocked the mattress a bit, “…ended up in some,” she snorted, “hot water.”</p><p>It was during her huge fit of laughter that Dave took the time to let out an obnoxiously long groan, then tell himself he was completely sure this is the way things should be, always were going to be, always would be, because why the fuck wouldn’t they?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Down the Road

The wedding was clean and sparse, small and tidy, just good enough to get the deed done. All their closest friends were invited, all cramped together in a tiny wooden church while having really bad cocktails and a enormous cake that tasted like a cross between Styrofoam and slime.

It was red, of course.

It was during the party that Dave excused himself to the bathroom. He took deep breaths, in and out, in and out, a calming exercise he liked to perform when he was sure no one was looking. This was particularly important now, when he had absolutely no reason to be nervous or anxious or be feeling any kind of negative emotion at all. Holding a big bouquet of all strikingly bright-red roses by his side, he leaned his head against the cool wall of the box-like lobby and exhaled.

“You look as if you’re about to be thrown into the den of lions.”

Caught off-guard, Dave jumped and whisked around. His first thought was that it was not a cool reaction at all, but he put his most practiced poker-face on and stared ahead at Rose, lovely Rose in her lilac dress, probably meant to emulate her Derse clothing from what? Four years ago? It would make sense, after all.

“You must be mistaken; I’m as happy as can be, a married fucking man who will be going on the most frivolously expensive honeymoon possible with the knowledge that I’ll be able to come home every night from work and have terrible sex with my lazy, overweight wife that takes advantage of the fact she is secure in this terrible marriage and milks her husband’s sub-standard job for all its worth. A married man, yessir, that’s the life everyone wishes for.”

“Dave,” Rose chided, but she smiled, strode up to him, and placed a long finger over his lips. “I am going to have to ask you to put aside that ironically sarcastic ruse you always put up, just for one day.” When he opened his mouth to speak again, she added, “In exchange, I will haul my own emotional shields away and speak to you as sincerely and to the point as John and Jade do to one another.”

He gently pushed her finger away, and looked at her, really looked at her to take in for just a moment all the minimalist simplicity of her purple dress, how her arms hung kind of tense as they always were but now with little lace embroidering the sides, her shoulders slightly stiff in their the puff of the sleeve as if constantly ready for a fight like they always have been, her feet practiced into a slightly aggressive position like they probably always will be. “No, no, let me fix that. She’ll lie around in bed and refuse me sex and demand another box of chocolates becau—”

“Dave.”

“—because it’s _fucking Valentine’s Day_ , _everyday_ , always for my little sugarbaby and—”

“Dave, please.”

“—and I’ll do anything, _anything_ for—”

“Dave, just one day, dammit, that’s my only request Dave.”

“All I’m saying i—”

“ _I’ve been talking,_ ” she cut him off firmly, “with John and Karkat. Interesting conversations, they were, always are with those two.”

She could have sworn she saw the muscles around his eyes twitch as if he was about to roll them back but caught himself and kept them steadily in their pockets. It reminded her of all those times she saw just the slightest forehead crease or the most minute tremble in his nose that she couldn’t be sure had even existed because of those childish shades he used to wear all the time.

“And we’ve all agreed on something concerning you, Dave, I most fervently because I’ve known this about you since our first pesterlogs.”

He raised his eyebrows ever-so-slightly, just within the realms of still being stoically indifferent.

“You do that thing you do, Dave; You put up your barriers and block everyone out, and this isn’t just the shitty psychobabble I was utterly delirious with in my adolescence, as you must remember.”

They both stood and stared at each other for a few moments, looking but not really seeing, only to hold up as a model, maybe running through their own versions of those scenes in their head-- the happy, the sad, the snarky.

“So just one day, Dave. I know you’ve got _the jitters_ , and you know that I would most likely react very similarly as you are now if left to my own devices, but I am completely confident you will have the best life with Terezi.” She saw his lips part open a little as if about to cut in, but Rose continued firmly. “She’s absolutely charming, you know, and you two fit together in ways that I had never seen before at thirteen years of age, which is exactly how I’d just known you were meant for each other from the start. There is no doubt in my mind that you’ll be great together, always.” Rose looked uncertain, but looked directly into Dave’s eyes with a determined way about her, almost daring him to tease her for the sentimental crap she was spewing.

Dave bit his lip in a show of uncharacteristic genuine emotion, and with a second of hesitation, he leaned over and gave Rose a hug. “Thanks, Rose. Really.”

 

Sometimes when Dave and Terezi lie around in bed, he’ll put on just a big red shirt and a pair of boxers and wait for Terezi to climb on top of him.

“Remember when you wouldn’t let me see your eyes at all, Dave?” she says one day while lying stomach-down on his body, staring down at his face from her place above.

“Well now you can stare into these gorgeous babies forever and ever, baby.” He looks straight into Terezi’s eyes and does a little eyebrow wiggle.

Terezi giggles and presses down on his lips to give him a deep kiss, then comes back up. “You told me you didn’t cry either, you remember that?”

“No recollection whatsoever,” he says, knowing where this is going. “You sure you’re not making this shit up, TZ?”

“No, no, I am one-hundred percent certain that this did indeed happen.”

“Well, all right, what happened next, presuming that I did make the very true claim that I do not cry?”

“Youyou _youu_ …” She bounced excitedly and rocked the mattress a bit, “…ended up in some,” she snorted, “ _hot water_.”

It was during her huge fit of laughter that Dave took the time to let out an obnoxiously long groan, then tell himself he was completely sure this is the way things should be, always were going to be, always would be, because why the fuck wouldn’t they?

 

“Dave, you will remove your feet from my skin this instant.”

Dave shifts only slightly from his position on the couch, legs up and feet pressed against Terezi’s face. “I thought you wanted every part of me, TZ, I’m fucking hurt.”

“This isn’t what I meant, and you know it, you asshole.”

He only rubs circles into her cheek with his toes.

Somehow Terezi turns this into a wrestling match when she suddenly leaps from her sitting position onto Dave, then drags him down to the ground. The two roll around like two kittens playing around on the kitchen floor, and they knock over many a priceless artifact, probably given to them during their wedding.

When Terezi and Dave finally manage to pull themselves away from each other—or rather, Dave mages to extract himself from Terezi’s ridiculous tickling match, screaming and giggling unshamefully like a schoolgirl—Dave leaves Terezi lying on the ground in exhaustion, returns to the television room, takes up the entirety of the couch in lying down, and knows that he’s happy, but not quite happy in the way he expected.

And maybe if Dave was a character in a sappy young adult romance novel, he would also know that the unexpected brought greater happiness than he had ever known and love conquers all. But he’s not and so he doesn’t, because sometimes the couple just falls asleep in various places around their apartment room and every time he closes his eyes and tries to fall asleep that night right there on the couch, he sees Rose in that great dress telling him that Terezi’s going to be great, that everything’s going to be great.

He supposes that that little tidbit about him still makes him sound like a character in a sappy young adult romance novel.

 

Sometimes his last thought before he goes to bed is Terezi, but occasionally he replays one of his interactions with Rose in his head and tries to live and breathe what they had been doing. One of these clips of thought was something that happened two days before their wedding, when Rose began slip in more and more of their first memories with each other, which meant more and more of that word “adolescent” that Rose loved so fucking much in their conversations.

Dave didn’t like that word. It sounded pretentious to him, and that was probably pretty hypocritical of him so he decided to just put up with it.

“You’re still a fucking adolescent, Rose.”

“Hardly true anymore, Dave; I’m turning 18 in a month.”

“More like 2 months.”

“Does it really matter, anyway? Your maturity level is several ranks lower than mine. Age is highly irrelevant in such a situation as ours.”

“Yes, yes, Rose, you’ve already reached god-tier maturity while little ol’ me is still putzing around with John down there on his fucking ecto-ladder thing, about, hmm, maybe a million levels down, am I right?”

“These are not the sort of levels that exist in a set numerical quantity. Tsk, tsk, Dave, I thought you would know that. Minus five levels for you, Dave, oops, looks like you’re down to your angsty preteen years.”

“Pretty damn harsh, you know, Rose. Guess I better tell TZ she’s a pedo now if she’s getting together with a boy still stuck in his preteens. Married herself into a life of depravity, she did.”

“Everything I say is just more potential for you to make an appropriately inappropriate remark, isn’t it?”

“You’re practically handing me material on a silver platter.”

 

The day after their one year anniversary, Dave realizes that he does love Terezi. He realizes that all that worry and indecision in him was for all the wrong reasons. He loves Terezi, and he can definitely live with her, definitely cares about her, but maybe not in the way that would have been ideal for their situation. Dave thinks that maybe Terezi had felt the same way about him and reached the same conclusion he has now much sooner. That kind of bothers Dave, and it bothers Dave that he doesn’t love Terezi in the correct way, and this whole thing really bothers Dave because he and Terezi get along fantastically.

The thing is, though, maybe getting along isn’t all you need for a marriage.

 

Looking down the road about two years later, Dave doesn’t quite know what had happened to make it like this, but somehow he had ended up never seeing Rose again after his wedding because of so many things that prevented them from meeting up again. Either he didn’t have time because he has to go grocery shopping right then because their supply was dangerously depleted, or she just couldn’t make it that whole week because she’s finally making it into photography somewhere, or he couldn’t get out of the house for nearly a month because Terezi was so sick, or she was out desperately looking for a job to take care of the baby on the way.

Dave sometimes thinks that he should have been closer with his sister, but sometimes he thinks that Jade was more like a sister to him than Rose was. Maybe it was like that for John and Rose, too, it occurs to him. John and he were like best bros forever, teasing and putting each other down because they were just that great of friends, and it was pretty similar with him and Rose, just more intelligently and with larger words. Jade made him want to be nicer and gentler, to be more caring and a little bit more helpful. It was that infectious way she had, he sometimes thinks, but still. He doesn’t know what, but he knows what he knows, and that is that Jade was his sister, and Rose was John’s.

One day, when Terezi was out for the night with her friends, when Dave’s hectic life finally settled down a little, when he knew for sure that there could be no offspring between the two of them, he sat down in his quiet little kitchen and dialed Rose’s number. He didn’t need to wait long, though; the operator came on right away to let him know that the number he had dialed was no longer in service. He shrugged it off and tried again, but just the same result. Again and again he dialed and dialed and dialed and it was a strange feeling because he hadn’t dialed her for so long, only talked to her online, but still the same voice every time, and it wasn’t Rose.

He dug through his old notebooks, he dug through Terezi’s old notebooks, tried every number there was in case he had recorded it down wrong, and the Post-it that had been on the wall for two years was wrong, in case his self from two years in the past had made a mistake, but it was all the same in the end.

That was when it dawned on Dave that Rose hadn’t come on Pesterchum for nearly three months not because she must hate its pesky interface or its clunky old design, or maybe she’s busy blogging on that blog she never showed him, or because she couldn’t handle the internet anymore, poor girl, but because she had moved on. She moved on so effortlessly, grew apart from Dave, had her own life because things had happened and changed everything, very, very slowly, but now the damage is done, the break had been made long before, and Rose was just something from the past, nothing but what was and what could have been, your childhood friend you never forget because of those few fleeting memories but you don’t actually know at all anymore because your timelines will never again cross.

The fridge buzzed noisily in the background, but all he could hear was that internal clock he had leftover from that one game from when he was little, that clock that he would never lose because it was a part of him forever, tick-tick-ticking his life away.

**Author's Note:**

> Okay, so I'd just like to mention that I'm not trying to sink any ships, prove why one ship is better than another, bash ships, etc etc etc. This is just a short piece on a possible AU-ish scenario if Sburb ended peacefully and earth welcomed trolls and Dave married Terezi. It's character-driven with a vague setting, just a little thing I wanted to try out with the characters.


End file.
